"News viewers have always been flirtatious"

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BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC that claims 76 million viewers a week in 200 countries, recently made some top-level changes to its advertising and sales team in India. The team now operates in two streams, news and non-news. A sign of things to come? “Absolutely,” says Vaishali Sharma, marketing head for BBC Worldwide in India, who is happy with the Indian news consumer, who is as clued in to home news as he is to what is happening around the world. This is the viewer that the channel is aggressively wooing. Sharma shares her organisation’s plans with FE’s Radhika Sachdev.

With its no-frills image, will BBC programming find any permanent takers among India’s young media consumers?

I don’t agree with that assertion. On the contrary, international news on BBC World is all set to become more important to Indian viewers. India’s growth story is only the beginning of the place that the country will occupy on the world map. Given the amount of talent we have to offer, across platforms like science, arts and culture, our influence on world politics etc, India would also grow on the world stage. So our reckoning is that these young media consumers, who would be the key contributors to all these fields, would also like to know what the world media is saying about them.

Growth, we believe can never be a one-sided story. If we have to make a difference either in India or across the globe, we need to get a more balanced perspective on the world and this is where BBC World comes into the picture. With news bulletins like World News Today and India Business Report, we give them a widow to the world and wider spectrum through features on technology like Click, season like Inside China and Russia.

How do you propose to grab a substantial share of a market that is increasingly getting fragmented and where viewers are turning more flirtatious by the day?

While at one end, the market may be getting fragmented, at the other, there seems to be emerging a growing need for genres that are impacting viewers lives. We are aware that BBC World will become important to our viewers in India as they increasingly need and consume international news. That will grow the category.